That was the end of the original Kangaroo, yes, though there was another that was a different guy in the '90s or 2000s, I believe.

I agree that the Kangaroo is kinda lame...and he doesn't even have an interesting or endearing backstory like the Mindworm or Frogman do.

I just read Spider-Man #129. It’s been a while since I read it. I had a beat-up copy that I bought used in the 1970s.

It’s the first Punisher and the first Jackal.

And WOW does the Jackal make the Punisher look like a chump or what?

When he realizes he’s been manipulated and used by the Jackal, the Punisher gets mad and punches a wall and vows to get revenge!

And then he never makes any attempt to get revenge on the Jackal ever again.

I actually would like to see such a story, set in the 1970s.

So I finished up Tarzan - In The City of Gold (Vol. 1): The Complete Burne Hogarth Sundays from Titan books.  Honestly, strip reprint books are hard to review.  There are a lot of things to look at, and sometimes the sum of the parts can be more or less than the whole.  So I'll just take a look at what I think are the salient parts. 

The physical book:  The book itself is pretty nice.  I believe it's tabloid size, not broadsheet, but it's certainly big enough to do justice to Sunday pages that were so much bigger than we have been used to seeing them in more than a half a century.  It's hardcover (without dustjacket) and the binding seems pretty good.  The reproduction of the strips is decent.  At times it seems a bit fuzzy and at times the colors are muted.  The biggest problem, especially for my old eyes, is that if the text is on a red or orange background it's incredibly hard to read.  Now that may have been an issue in the original.  Or it may not.  But it's definitely an issue here and plays in with the fuzziness of the line.  

Art:  Hogarth is a master and the artwork is excellent.  I'll be the first to acknowledge that Joe Kubert is my favorite Tarzan artist (we're talking comic art here, not covers or spot illos).  He gave Tarzan, and particularly the jungles, an earthy feel that made it look humid, dank, sweaty and dirty.  Hogarth's jungle is pretty clean, but it's definitely not as pristine as Hal Foster's or Russ Manning's.  The only real issue with the art is the reproduction isn't as crisp as one would want.  

Story:  And here's the rub.  The stories here are pretty bad.  I'm well aware that these are over 80 years old.  And there are limitations in the form because you want to end each page on a cliff-hanger to get the reader to come back next week.  But they just aren't very good.  First, this is not the same Tarzan as the Burroughs novels.  He's similar.  But there's no Jane.  Not a mention.  And it's not pre-Jane Tarzan, because then he shouldn't be actively hanging out with different groups of white folks.  The stories suffer from a lot of Burroughs' faults (coincidence, love at first sight, deus ex machina) without any of his strengths.  And while, again, I recognize that these are old and times change, it's super hard to see the poor down-trodden Boers who have been taken advantage of by the wicked and wily jungle natives.  

This is a nice package.  It's going to look great on your shelf or your coffee table.  And it's excellent to page through and check out Hogarth's art.  He really was an excellent comics artist.  But it's a rough go to sit down and read this for the stories it contains.  

Batman: Child of Dreams
Kia Asamiya, 2003 (Eng. translation)

This was originally serialized in Kodansha Publishing’s Magazine Z in Japan in 2000, then DC published a collected adaptation a few years later. The cover credits Max Allan Collins with the adaptation, but what he did was adapt a translation of Asamiya’s script, while “lettering and art modifications” were done by Dan Nakrosis – which was actually the harder task, I think, since this means flipping the panels, replacing the lettering for sound effects in Japanese with English and touching up the art after these changes.
The story begins with a Japanese TV news crew flying into Gotham to shoot a feature about Batman – Yuko Yagi, a former weather girl on her first assignment, hopes to land an exclusive interview with the Caped Crusader to prove that she’s not just another pretty face (with a rich uncle wth a controlling interest in the TV station). Over the next few days, there’s no shortage of excitement, as apparently every one of the Batman’s major villains, Two Face, Penguin, Riddler and Joker, stage insanely violent crimes but are then easily taken down by the Dark Knight. However, it ends up none of them are the real deal (the genuine articles are all safely locked away in Arkham at the time), but rather ordinary people who have taken some kind of experimental drug that turns them into the villains for a brief time, after which their bodies begin to shrivel up and they die in horrible pain, leaving behind a dessicated corpse. Batman finds that the drug may actually have been produced in Japan, so he travels to Tokyo to continue his investigation –and it seems like Yuko may be more connected to the entire situation than even she realizes.

I found the story here pretty solid, and I liked the manga take on Batman. However, I have mixed feelings about the art. The backgrounds, panel design and wide shots look really good. However, I really don’t like any of the close-ups because of the way Asamiya renders faces. Specifically, he draws everybody with really huge noses. It just looks kind of weird:

I'm reading Mighty Marvel Masterworks Incredible Hulk. This one reprints Tales to Astonish #59-74, which is the very beginning of the Hulkster's run in TTA. Stan Lee with Ditko then Kirby. Overall, it's a fun read, but there are lots of inconsistencies and illogical happenings. Lee & Co. clearly don't know what to do with the Hulk at this point. The status quo throughout much of this run is that his heartrate increasing turns him from Banner into the Hulk but his heartrate increasing ALSO turns him from the Hulk into Banner! That makes no sense. Wouldn't he immediately just change from Banner to the Hulk, then change right back again since his heartrate is already increased? Besides, Hulk is almost always angry, so why isn't he always changing back into Banner. Anyway, this volume gives us the first appearances of Major Talbot as well as the Leader!

I remember this book being decent. I ditched it when he cut his long hair. 

I honestly wish it had been developed more; things like the Lord of Serpents could have used more of a fleshing out.

Thomas said he ended it because he had a lot of other projects that just had higher priority.